A customer may desire timely delivery of a customized Ethernet networking solution that achieves high performance communication. Furthermore, the customer may wish to minimize and/or optimize a latency at the network, data link, and/or physical layers of the open systems interconnection (OSI) abstraction model. For example, the customer may be a high speed internet provider, have a website concerned with webpage loading times and/or video streaming quality, and/or have another application that requires low latency and/or real time response. A vendor may provide the customized Ethernet networking solution to the customer as a design of an Ethernet sub-circuit of an IC that is customized for a technology and/or design requirements desired by the customer. However, the vendor may require significant time and technical expertise to develop the design of the Ethernet sub-circuit.
In one example, the customized Ethernet networking solution may be targeted to a data center involved in high frequency trading, an area where low latency Ethernet communication within and between data centers is critically important. The customer may upgrade to ICs in the data center that use a faster switching technology (for example: a smaller technology node size). The customer may therefore desire a design of a new Ethernet sub-circuit that is latency optimized for the faster switching technology. Alternatively, the customer may redesign the ICs in the data center using the same technology, but may require a design of an Ethernet sub-circuit that can achieve and/or accommodate a new target input and/or output bandwidth, frequency and/or bus width (such as a new bus width input to the Ethernet sub-circuit by the IC). In both cases, the vendor may require a significant amount of time and technical expertise in order to generate a customized design of the new Ethernet sub-circuit that can meet timing requirements while maintaining, optimizing and/or minimizing latency, size and/or power consumption of the Ethernet sub-circuit. As a result, the customer may not have the time or financial resources to invest in the customized Ethernet solution.